Posted on 04/18/2002 9:43:11 AM PDT by swarthyguy
Many of the foreign Muslim fighters who participated in the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina flowed into the region with U.S. and NATO knowledge through an arms pipeline that evaded a U.N. embargo.
Now, the West is feeling the fallout of its attempts to help the Bosnian Muslims in their fight. Some of the Mujahedeen, many who came into Bosnia under the guise of working for an aid agency and stayed, are believed to have contacts with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network, which sent fighters to the country and funded the pipeline.
"There was minimal concern among the allies [about the flow of arms and Mujahedeen during the Bosnian war]," said Robert Hunter, U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from 1993 to 1998 and now an analyst with the think tank Rand in Washington, D.C.
Some of the Mujahedeen, who fought and stayed after the war, remain a threat to NATO peacekeepers — including 3,100 U.S. troops, CIA Director George Tenet told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee last month.
"U.S and other international forces are most at risk in Bosnia, where Islamic extremists from outside the region played an important role in the ethnic conflicts of the 1990s," Tenet said in his March 19 testimony. "There is considerable sympathy for international Islamic causes among the Muslim community in Bosnia."
Much of this sympathy comes from local groups organized by some of these fighters, which have indirect links to terrorist groups, a former colonel with the Bosnian army’s military intelligence unit told the Stars and Stripes.
The colonel, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he fears retaliation, said he was told to monitor the Mujahedeen during the last years of the war. He said there were about 500 Mujahedeen who came to help Bosnia from 1993 until the end of the war.
The colonel broke down the Mujahedeen into three types:
¶ Holy Warriors — those who came to die as "kamikazes" for the Islamic cause.
¶ Criminals — those who "are not real Muslims but came to profit from the war." This is the largest group that stayed in the country, and many now "work or have worked for aid agencies and get paid a lot of money." These Mujahedeen use "sweet words" to recruit local people to extremist groups. It’s in this group that "the terrorists hide because they are not real Muslims."
¶ Fundamentalists — this group is the "most dangerous for Bosnia because they want to set up a fundamentalist state."
"Many people think that most of these fighters came from Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey, but from what I saw, most came from Sudan, Libya and Egypt," the colonel said. "Most of them were Sunni Muslims."
Bin Laden, who was living in Sudan at the time of the Bosnian war, is a member of the Sunni sect of Islam and had a hand in bringing the fighters into Bosnia along with funding the embargo-breaking arms pipeline, wrote bin Laden expert Peter L. Bergen in "Holy War Inc.," a book about the al-Qaida.
"A Vienna-based charity linked to bin Laden, Third World Relief Agency, funneled millions of dollars in contributions to the Bosnians," wrote Bergen, who has interviewed bin Laden and is a CNN analyst.
"Al-Qaida trained Mujahedeen to go and fight in Bosnia during the early ’90s, and bin Laden’s Services Office also maintained an office in neighboring Croatia’s capital, Zagreb."
The Mujahedeen came into Bosnia from Croatia, the colonel said. "They came into Croatia at the ports of Split and Rijeka. Those were big centers."
Along with the fighters, the arms pipeline came through Croatia and was funded by Third World Relief Agency, the Washington Post reported in a September 1996 story. The wartime Bosnian government depended on the Third World Relief Agency, which obtained and paid for weapons from Iran and other countries along with supplying fighters, the Post reported.
With a U.N. arms embargo in place, the Bosnian Muslim government was driven into alliances with some of the world’s most radical states that were then on a U.S. State Department watch list of countries that support terrorism as well as terrorist movements, the Post story said.
Now, many of the Mujahedeen and weapons bought and shipped by Third World Relief Agency remain in the Balkans. Peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo are faced with trying to locate these weapons and apprehend the fighters.
Many of those weapons turned up in Kosovo in the late 1990s and during last year’s Albanian insurgency in Macedonia, Kosovo peacekeeping force officials have said.
During his Senate testimony in March, Tenet said the Mujahedeen who remain in Bosnia, aided by weak border controls, large amounts of weapons and organized crime in the Balkans, pose an "ongoing threat to U.S. forces there," as well as to the stability of the area.
Report: No evidence of U.S. weapons assistance
In 1996, an investigative report by the Los Angeles Times accused the Clinton administration of funneling money to buy weapons for the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to the Times, the plan was similar to one used by the Reagan administration to fund the Contras in Nicaragua through Iran in the Iran-Contra affair from 1983-88. It supposedly involved an effort in 1994 to fund weapons assistance or to encourage other nations, namely Iran, to break the international embargo on supply weapons to the Bosnian Muslims through Croatia.
In a November 1996 report, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found no evidence that the administration was involved in any such covert activity.
The committee did find that the Clinton administration knew about the Third World Relief Agency — a Muslim organization that also had ties to Osama bin Laden and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the radical Egyptian cleric convicted of masterminding the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 — and its activities beginning in 1993.
The United States took no action to stop the organization’s fund-raising, transportation of fighters or arms purchases because of the administration’s sympathy for the Muslim government and ambivalence about maintaining the arms embargo.
The Clinton administration didn’t break any laws when it adopted a "no instructions" policy or when it remained silent when Croatian President Franjo Tudjman asked the U.S. for its view in 1994 on Iran using the Third World Relief Agency to ship weapons through Croatia to Bosnia, the Senate committee said.
The closest the administration came to breaking the law was when Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who was then the director of Strategic Plans and Policy on the Joint Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explored options with Bosnian leaders about lifting the U.N. embargo, encouraging greater third-party arms flows and the clandestine flow of embargo-breaking arms, the committee said in its report.
Clark, who went on to become NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, told the committee he had viewed the discussions as an exploration of overt policy options because he had no authority to develop covert options.
The committee report said that while Clark told Bosnian officials that he had no authority, his positive tone on covert embargo-busting might have given those officials a stronger impression than he intended.
While the administration eventually stopped enforcing the embargo, it is "ludicrous" to think that it broke any laws, said Robert Hunter, U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from 1993 to 1998.
— Gregory Piatt
What have you been smoking? Izetbegovic, Boban and Karadzic all signed. Resorting to bluffs, are we Hoppie? Tsk, tsk, you're looking as bad as the ICTY.
Did Lisbon produce a map agreed to by all three of the parties? No.
The geographic area for each group was established. In any case, we're not discussing cartography.
Did the JNA transfer units from Croatia into Bosnia prior to April of 1992? Yes.
Prior to April of 1992 Bosnia was still a republic of Yugoslavia. So what is wrong with the Jugoslav National Army repositioning within Yugoslav borders?
Did Serbia serve as a springboard for the attacks on Eastern Bosnia in 1992? Yes.
Did Croatia serve as a springboard? Yes. Your point is?
These are a no win arguments for you, Bob.
I'll agree with that one - most discussions with you seem to be a waste of time. However, if you wanna play Q&A, I've got a few for you:
Did the Yugoslav constitution establish the criteria for a repbulic seceding from the federal government? Yes.
Was Bosnia able to meet those criteria? No.
Did some Bosnian Muslims continue to arm themselves and pursue independence by force? Yes.
Did Izetbegovic sign the Lisbon agreement, which agreed to partition Bosnia into 3 autonomous regions and avoided a civil war? Yes.
Shortly after meeting with U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmerman, did Izetbegovic withdraw his signature to the treaty? Yes.
If Bosnian Muslims can illegally secede from Yugoslavia in the name self determination, shouldn't Bosnian Serbs be given the same prerogative to secede from Bosnia and remain in Yugoslavia? Yes.
US Attacks Put Spotlight on Bosnia Muslim Community ``Osama is our brother''
Albanian Arrested With False ID at Dam; Sought For Deportation (Feared Water Reservoir Tampering)
Danger! KLA in the U.S.A. (A Blast From the Past - Freepers Warned of KLA - Osama bin Laden Threat)
The Balkan Branches of the Terror Network "in search of blond Moslems"
Here's the reference... "...Israeli secret services believed the terrorist network in the Balkans was a part of the global Islamic terrorist network and consisted of some 6,000 terrorists."
What you call placing the number in context is spinning a poorly worded sentence.
Tty this...""...Israeli secret services believed the terrorist network in the Balkans consisted of some 6,000 terrorists and was a part of the global Islamic terrorist network."
So, I'll say again, if you think the 6,000 applies world-wide you are delusional or a rather poor spinner.
The EC map, produced in March of 1992 at the Villa Konak meeting (The Cutilero meetings spanned 3 locations and two Months in 1992 - Lisbon, Brussels, and Villa Konak in Sarajevo) gave Prijedor, Srebrenica, Gorazde, Foca, Mostar, Brcko, and Zvornik to the Bosniaks, while the Posavina Corridor, the jugular of the Serbs in the Krajina, didn't exist, and large portions of what can be considered the proto-RS were isolated from each other as well as from Serbia.
Compare that with the SDS map of the time, which connected all the Serb enclaves together, expanded Serb territory at the expense of the other two nationalities, and laid claim to Bihac of all places, and you've got your work cut out for you proving that a working agreement existed.
Add to your troubles Cutilero's post meeting statement from the meetings of 17-18 March doesn't state that anything was signed, and Oslobodenje's report from March 19th wherein the Bosnian delegation stated that they didn't sign anything, and the Croat HDZ's repudiation of the agreement on the 24th of March, which the last time I checked came before the SDA's rejection of the 25th of March.
What was agreed to in the Cutilero negotiations was a framework for the governing of Bosnia (read that carving up), and not the actual demarcation lines - hence all three parties had different ideas about who was going to get what, and the Croats, upon seeing only 17% of Bosnia allotted to them, with 59% of Bosnia's Croats living outside of that 17% of Bosnia, said screw this first, and were followed thereafter by the Muslims.
Subsequent Serb actions, namely the overrunning of 70% of Bosnia and the ethnic cleansing thereof, give lie to any Serb claims of good faith concerning the EC map.
You may not want to frame it as a cartography issue, but the three parties involved in 1992 saw it as nothing but being about maps and where to place the lines on them.
What is wrong about the JNA repositioning from Croatia into Bosnia is that when hostilities broke out in April, they didn't act as the JNA, restoring Yugoslav sovereignity over territory and peoples, but were complicit in the activities of the Serb paramilitaries which were pouring in over the Drina, and their counterparts around Banja Luka - there's a logical caltrop to your argument thrown out by JNA units being part and parcel to the murder, robbing, and ethnic cleansing of those who were supposed to still be Yugoslav citizens, albeit of a wayward Bosnian variety. Or maybe yon Yugoslavs just have a strange way of trying to bring minorities back into the fold, eh Bob?
Did the UN recognize Bosnia as a Nation, making Serbia's war on it an act of external aggression?
Yes.
Nothing more need be said on the matter.
And if you wish to continue to deal with Bosnia that way, the Presevo Valley, the Sandzak, and Vojvodina are just begging for you to apply the same formula - hell, you can have Serbia down to the area immediately surrounding Belgrade before you know it.
Drive on.
Congratulations.
I was under the impression that the UN recognized Bosnia as a state, not as a nation. The Bosnian Moslems were recongnized as a nation by Tito in the 1974 constitution. The UN ignored the three golden rules for recognizing a state:
1: That there is clear majority support for independence;
2: That the those representing the above, have territorial control over the territory;
3: That the rights of the minority are guaranteed.
As for external agression, from memory, the 'international community' gave the FRY a deadline to 'withdraw' JA troops from Bosnia and put Alois Mock, the Austrian foreign minister incharge of the UN report that was to underpin such a decision. The report was completed several days before the deadline, but Mock sat on it until just after the UN had voted to place sanctions on the FRY.
I'll see if I can dig up the actual information on the role of Alois Mock and ask the others if they have the info on hand.
VRN
UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali submitted to the Security Council the Report on his investigation of possibilities to carry out decisions contained in Resolution 752 on Yugoslavia and what international assistance could be ensured in connection with paragraph 4 of that Resolution. This report is dated 30 May 1992, and was made public three days later, after the UN Security Council adopted the Resolution 575. In this Report the Secretary General gives brief background on the events in Bosnia- Herzegovina starting from 26 April 1992 and on the basis of the mentioned facts points, among other things, to the following: It is obvious that the problem of deblockade and safe withdrawal of remaining YPA soldiers from their barracks in Bosnia- Herzegovina is in connection with other problems that caused the continuation of conflict in that republic...UNPROFOR had some indication that YPA leaders in Belgrade are ready to leave most of their arms behind, but the leadership of the army of "Serbian Republic Bosnia- Herzegovina" is not willing to allow this. Uncertainty over who has control over Serbian forces in Bosnia- Herzegovina complicated the situation even more, and that there are doubts as to the ability of authorities in Belgrade to influence general Mladic (commander of Serbian forces in BH). UNPROFOR obtained reliable reports that members of the Croatian army, in uniforms, act within and as the part of military formations in Bosnia- Herzegovina, and that information currently available to us in New York suggest that (elements of the Croatian army) failed to withdraw. The Report mentions that international assistance could play the role in the realization of each of three possible solutions mentioned in Resolution 752 for YPA units and elements of the Croatian army which are presently in Bosnia- Herzegovina. Insurance of such assistance, however, would imply conclusion of necessary agreements, and their observance by all sides, in particular commanders of mentioned units and elements. At the end of Report Secretary General adds: "Today's decision of the Security Council on introduction of sanctions against FR Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) leads to a new situation. It still seems uncertain what consequences it will have on issues discussed in this report. However, one should hope that this expression of determination of the international community to stop fighting in Bosnia- Herzegovina will ease the way toward necessary agreements through negotiation."
Source - May 30
And secondly this: The dissenting judge at the International Court of Justice on why Bosnia shouldn't be recognized.
VRN
"As far as the international law of SFRY is concerned, suffice it to note the provisions of Article 5(1) of the SFRY Constitution which stipulated expressis verbis that the "territory of SFRY is unified" and that it is "composed of the territories of the Socialist Republics". That the "boundaries" between the federal units were merely lines of administrative division is also evidenced by the fact that they were not directly established by any legal act. "
So was Croatia, but they had the backing of their German and American allies
...your three conditions also preclude the formation of the Republika Srpska or the RSK.
The three conditions are the generally recognized internationally as pre-requisites for recognition. It's got nothing to do with me.
The issue is, that it was Croatia and Bosnia that were recognized by the international community in defiance of the norms and dressed up as legitimate with figleafs such as the Badinter Commission. These decisions flew in the face of what their own balkans intelligence experts said. Recognition was not given in the interests of those citizens, but because of selfish national interests and the pompous belief in that they 'knew best'. The West guaranteed that war would happen. It might have happened anyway, but it was outsiders who put the last nail in.
VRN
Your opinion, and that of the actual citizens involved at the time, seem to differ.
VRN
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.